NEW YORK (1010 WINS/AP) -- Ed Mullins, the former head of the NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association, pleaded not guilty to wire fraud after the government says he allegedly "fraudulently obtained" over $1 million in expense reimbursements from his organization.
Mullins, 59, was released on $250,000 bail months after the FBI raided his home and the union’s office.
He surrendered Wednesday and appeared later in Manhattan federal court before he entered his not guilty plea.
According to the Department of Justice, for nearly two decades Mullins served as the head of the SBA and in or around 2017 and in or around October 2021, he allegedly defrauded the association "by using his personal credit card to pay for meals at high-end restaurants and to purchase luxury personal items, among other things, and then submitting false and inflated expense reports to the SBA, seeking reimbursement for those bills as legitimate SBA expenditures when in fact they were not."
If convicted, Mullins faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
“As alleged, Edward Mullins, the former President of the SBA, abused his position of trust and authority to fund a lavish lifestyle that was paid for by the monthly dues of the thousands of hard-working Sergeants of the NYPD," said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.
He continued, "Mullins submitted hundreds of phony expense reports to further his scheme, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the SBA. This Office is committed to rooting out corruption at all levels of government, and that includes public officials like Mullins who use their positions of power to line their own pockets to the detriment of others."
Mullins resigned as the head of the union on Oct. 5, hours after FBI agents were seen hauling boxes out of his Port Washington home and the union’s Lower Manhattan headquarters.
An FBI spokesperson confirmed at the time that the raids were part of an active probe but didn’t provide details.
He retired from the NYPD in November, a month after he was placed on modified duty and forced to give up his gun and badge because of the raids.
“The nature and scope of this criminal investigation has yet to be determined. However, it is clear that President Mullins is apparently the target of the federal investigation," the SBA Executive Board told its members in a message after his resignation.
The SBA represents about 13,000 active and retired NYPD sergeants and controls a $264 million retirement fund.
At a court appearance for Mullins, defense attorney Marc Mukasey said his client had agreed with prosecutors that he would not have any contact with members of the union or its leadership related to the wire fraud charge he faces.
Mullins, a police officer since 1982, rose to sergeant, a rank above detective but below captain and lieutenant, in 1993 and was elected president of the sergeants union in 2002.
Mullins was the outspoken face of the union before he resigned, getting into a number of controversies during his tenure.
Mullins, a police sergeant detached to full-time union work, was subject to department disciplinary proceedings last year for tweeting NYPD paperwork in 2020 regarding the arrest of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s daughter during protests over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.
Along with Mullins’ periodic appearances on cable networks like Fox News and Newsmax — including one in which he was pictured in front of a QAnon mug — perhaps the union’s most powerful megaphone is its 45,000-follower Twitter account, which Mullins runs himself, often to fiery effect.
In 2018, amid a rash of incidents in which police officers were doused with water, Mullins suggested it was time for then-Commissioner James O’Neill and Chief of Department Terence Monahan to “consider another profession” and tweeted that “O’KNEEL must go!”
O’Neill retorted that Mullins was “a bit of a keyboard gangster” who seldom showed up to department functions.
Last year, Mullins came under fire for tweets calling the city’s former Health Commissioner, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, a “b****” and U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres a “first-class whore.”
Mullins was upset over reports Barbot refused to give face masks to police in the early days of the pandemic and angry with Torres’ calls for an investigation into a potential police work slowdown in September 2020.
Torres, who is gay, denounced Mullins’ tweet as homophobic.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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